Thursday, October 09, 2008

Where do you stand in the great productivity divide?

Seth Godin, is remarkable for many reasons, but I enjoy his blog for its startling simplicity and provoking questions. In this entry titled "The growing productivity divide" he asks 16 compelling questions for anyone participating in the digital world and economy.

The questions are below:

-Can you capture something you see on your screen and paste it into Word or PowerPoint?-Do you have a blog?-Can you open a link you get in an email message?-Do you read more than five blogs a day?-Do you have a signature in your outbound email?-Do you have an RSS reader?-Can you generate a PDF document from a Word file you're working on?-Do you know how to build and share a simple spreadsheet using Google Docs?-Do have a shortcut for sending mail to the six co-workers you usually write to?-Are you able to find what you're looking for on Google most of the time?-Do you know how to download a file from the internet?-Do you back up your work?-Do you keep track of contacts using a digital tool?-Do you use anti-virus software?-Do you fall for internet hoaxes and forward stuff to friends and then regret it?-Have you ever bought something from a piece of spam?

It's more relevant than you think as layoffs loom for many. This is not about being technically elite but about basic skills that are/will be in demand and expected for most in the sense that "Experienced With Microsoft Office" is/was for many during the past decade.

Godin concludes "How can you imagine yourself as a highly-paid knowledge worker and not know how to do these things... If you don't, it's not hard to find someone to teach you."

For the record, I said yes to 13 of the first 14 questions and no to the last 2.